On Pine medicine, seasonal slowness, and finding consistency amidst change.

Words by Hat Fidkin  •  Images by Ezel Yurdanur and Hat Fidkin

This year I spent Christmas Day in a Pine forest. The smell reminded me of my childhood living room in December. Clean, comforting, but with a rich earthiness dragged in from outside; something wild I associate with contrasting memories of domestic warmth. Fire burning, food cooking, movie watching, chocolate sharing. 

But this time, the air that surrounded me was not the centrally heated, turkey-scented afternoon sleepiness of years gone by, but piercingly fresh, as sharp as the scent of Pine itself. 2,500m up on the sheer face of a mountain on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley, these trees were far from their farmed and felled fir cousins of my early years. Wildly reaching towards the heavens, bark scorched black from the devastating forest fires of previous years, their only shiny decorations were the jewels of the forest, broaches borne of their own blood: Pine pitch, hardened into honey-coloured wound-sealing resin. 

Spending most of the Yule season immersed within dense thickets of conifer siblings Pine and Juniper felt right; Pine’s wisdom is one of deep reflectiveness and inward turning, the motions of the wheel of the year’s current position. Although I am far from home and the long, dark nights of England’s midwinter, I am anchored by the plants’ gentle reminders of time passing. 

Placing a hand against the fractal layers of a Pine tree’s bark can give a sense of just how ancient these beings are. Pine trees are one of the oldest beings on Earth, evolving around 200 million years ago. Two hundred million years of steady knowing and gentle offerings of food, medicine and companionship.

Pine tree ring print, by Lee Richards.

Many Indigenous peoples across the world have long lived in reciprocity with Pine. Mihe Heyanenhes Yattse Omiklakhlese, a herbalist and tribal administrator for the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, tells of various Indigenous uses of the Pine tree in this video, including the use of its astringent inner bark as an antimicrobial wash, fresh Pine needle tea as a cold medicine and diuretic, and Pine needles as a material for traditional basket weaving. ¹ In the Great Lakes region, traditional Chippewa uses of Pine include chewing its gum resin for sore throats, heating it up to draw out splinters, and hollowing out Pine tree trunks to make dugout canoes. ²

For Purépecha people of Michoacán, Mexico living in rural communities, Pine resin can bring valuable income. With patience and reverence, skilled harvesters scrape the bark without harming the tree to collect resin, which is processed into raw tar and turpentine, a natural solvent widely used in eco-friendly cleaning products. ³

Pre-Christian traditions across Scandinavia and Northern Europe through the ages have honoured evergreens around the time of winter solstice when everything else around them has withered and died, and for this they symbolise eternal life and hope. Also a symbol of fertility, Pine was associated with the cult of Dionysus of Ancient Greece, with worshippers carrying phallic Pine cone tipped staffs.

Highly nutritive, Pine nuts are used widely in the cuisines of the Crossroads region,⁴ where the Aleppo Pine, Turkish Pine and Stone Pine grow abundantly. They are a key ingredient in Palestine’s national dish Musakhan. Lebanese Pine nuts, or Snawbar Baladi, are a highly prized delicacy, and grow only in the forests of Metn and Jezzine.  

Within some Celtic cultures, Pine has been burned as an incense to promote vitality and protect against malevolent energies. Cailleach’s Herbarium describes a kind of ‘fumigation’ practiced with Pine candles (resin soaked Pine wood) or Juniper branches “to protect from evil spirits at Hogmanay or a new borns’ saining (blessing) respectively.” The fumigation is described as a ‘harsh exercise’, in which all of the windows and doors were closed and Juniper branches smoked until people could no longer handle being in the room.⁵

And in Nepal, where I found myself high among the Pines on Christmas Day, tiny pieces of Pinewood soaked in resin – diyalo is the local name – are used to light homes and burn offerings for fire pujas. Cailleach’s Herbarium also notes the similarities between Scottish and Nepalese traditional burnings of Pine and Juniper. Finding out that the practices of my ancestors, and the people of the land I was lucky enough to be a guest in, share this ‘magiko-religious’ use of Conifers was very moving. 

 Though Pine is, on surface level, a constant of many landscapes, rooted in place for hundreds – sometimes thousands – of years, green in all seasons when others cyclically shed, offering medicine in the depths of winter when other allies are sleeping, make no mistake: Great Grandfather Pine is forever in flux, growing from the inside out, sloughing off its dead outer layer when feeling too constrained, expanding multidimensionally from within.⁶ 

Pine may come from the Latin root peie meaning ‘to swell’ – a reference to its sap or pitch. The Sanskrit name similarly comes from पितु  (pituh) meaning sap, juice and/or resin.⁷ This swelling shifting and internal growth, remaining rooted whilst shimmering intensity flows throughout, is Pine’s medicine for us. Pine shows what it looks like to remain grounded and consistent throughout life’s unavoidable changes. Within our layers exists deep time, and a knowing that change is the only constant. 

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we are still in the dark time of the yearly cycle, and many perpetually struggle with this lack of sunshine. Even halfway around the world as I write this, my cyclical body feels it too. Kathmandu’s scorched Pines shivered in the cold of that Christmas morning, ever-so-slightly frosty, their needles waving in a breeze the sound of Saturn’s rings, a hollow echo calling to mind a universal emptiness. Though this emptiness does not feel void-like and black, but instead like the blissful simplicity of quiet knowing: the ancient hive-mind of Pines across the world.

Pine’s medicine is, in part, the invigorating scent of its resin; a strong expectorant and immunity booster. The smell of Pine is a sharp, clear bell that brings us back to our senses; back to the heat and aliveness of the body that tends to stagnate during winter’s freeze. Burning resin as incense, working with an ethically sourced Pine essential oil, or literally putting your nose up against the bleeding bark of a Pine out in the forest and inhaling deeply (a personal favourite) can help with deeper breathing in the often congested cold times. 

I’ve been harvesting small amounts of Pine resin on my travels over the past few months after spending many hours sitting with trees of different lands, and listening to what unfolds. I am journeying with a bag full of tiny fragments of the forest that I will later burn to find myself back amongst it. I often feel that touch and smell do a better job of inviting a sense of the ancient into our bodies than can be conveyed through any kind of written word. Burn the resin, inhale the smoke, and feel bark against the skin.

Like the layers of Pine’s ever growing and shifting membrane, human relational dynamics with plants don’t operate within any kind of permanence. Sometimes writing about these relationships which are hard to put into words feels futile, when writing itself can never go as deep as what we sense deep within our tissues through embodied relations: “The written word is static, reference-able, policeable. The spoken and sensed are dynamic, fluid, changing.”⁸ Writing was created as a colonial tool of forced written literacy, seeking to extinguish any and all extrasensory knowledge.⁹ A deep relationship with the plants defies what words on a page can convey, and Pine knows this well, being a Plantcestor ¹⁰ who has witnessed our evolutionary experience like no other. 

Being in right relationship with non-human others can be a dance of learning, making mistakes, and responding with willingness to listen, adapt, and give back. We are all wounded, and have and will wound others, like it or not. Pine’s self healing, and generous gift of this same balm to others in need of repair, reflects the encoded practice of reciprocity found throughout a harmonious ecosystem. When injured, Pine will excrete a sticky pitch to close its wound, often in abundance, leaving some for other folk of the forest to use in their healing. This pitch, hardening into a resin, is renowned as a remedy for almost any skin complaint you might think of (cuts, scrapes, bruises, wounds, eczema, psoriasis, acne).

Traditionally, Indigenous cultures around the world used melted Pine sap to close wounds, fight infection, and pull impurities to the surface. But it is more practical to combine the freshly melted sap with beeswax and make a salve – applying directly from the tree can cause a very sticky situation (literally). To my knowledge, resin-exuding conifers in Britain and Western Europe are non-toxic when in direct contact with skin, all except the highly poisonous Yew tree (see here for a detailed Yew identification guide, then jump to the next section for a helpful Pine identification video).¹¹ However resins may cause reactions in individuals with allergies or sensitive skin, so it is a good idea to do a patch test if this is the first time working with Pine. Regarding the Pines of Turtle Island, Scott Cunningham says that “White Pine has no precautions. Other varieties can cause dermatitis and/or have oils that can be irritating when touched”.¹² The Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Healthcare says that Ponderosa Pine, Lodgepole Pine and Norfolk Island Pine are all toxic, with their resin unsafe to use in salve making.¹³

If you harvest too much resin from a Pine tree, its wound will reopen, and the individual will be unable to heal, leaving Pine vulnerable to disease and infection. For those for whom generosity and empathy are unthinking ways of relating to others (traits often amplified in plant people), Pine holds the lesson that one cannot hold others without some attempt to dress their own wounds first. The practice of Pine Patience, the inner awareness of returning to self during the dark season, and taking time – if it is possible for you – to nourish the burnout and tiredness many of us feel around the holidays, in turn offers support in being better able to show up for our communities in the bleakness of winter. Pine stays evergreen so you don’t have to, providing nourishing medicines year-round, even in the cold, dark times where many, human and non-human, find their energy decreases. So call upon this warming medicine as we move through the last few weeks of cold to accompany you in the depths of it all.

Listed below are some simple rituals to practice slowness and patience with the companionship of Pine. They may be enjoyed as acts of gentleness for the self, or together with friends and family this dark season. Pines can be found almost the world over; I encourage you to find a Pine tree you connect with in your locality, and spend some time with your hands on its bark, breathing in the scent of its resin, communicating using your extra-sensory abilities. If you do just one thing from this list, let it be that.

• If there is a forest near to where you live, take a walk in it. Spend some time among the evergreens and tell them of your troubles. Pines are excellent listeners. 

• Harvest some Pine resin and burn to clear your home to welcome in the new year. Take only as much as you need to allow the tree to heal. You can burn Pine resin using a charcoal disc as the base. 

   

• Harvest some Pine needles to make a batch of Pine tea for yourself and your loved ones to fight winter coughs and colds. The Scots Pine is the only native Pine in Britain and Ireland, though Douglas Fir (actually a Pine tree, not a fir tree) is naturalised and also common. Be very careful to avoid the toxic yew tree. Watch this helpful guide for identification tips. Pregnant and nursing people should avoid consuming Pine needle tea. 

   

• Make a Pine salve to tend to your aches and pains – this one is particularly helping for any folks suffering from arthritis, especially in the winter months. Gather your mates to go foraging and craft together. Watch this space for a recipe to be shared in the next blog post. 

   

• Mihe Heyanenhes Yattse Omiklakhlese shares a couple more Pine recipes in this video, including tincture making, Pine, Catnip and Peppermint tea, Pine soap and a relaxing Pine bath! Spend the day with yourself and honour the Pine by alchemising its spirit into medicine. 

2. NativeTech: Native American Technology and Art, Indigenous Plants & Native Uses in the Northeast, PINE plant profile

3. IFAD, Rural Voices. In Pictures: Pine Resin Binds Indigenous Communities in Mexico to a Sustainable Future (2025)

4. Layla K Feghali of River Rose Remembrance: “Crossroads is my term for the broader region of Southwest Asia and northern Africa, a less colonial description of the area typically called the Middle East and North Africa. It is a descriptive word for this region that veers away from colonial continental bordering.”

5. Cailleachs Herbarium, Scottish Folk magic and the dead (part three) – folk charms, herbs for the dead and second sight (2017)

6. ‘Great Grandfather Pine’ refers here to my own relationship with the spirit of Pine, as I experience its energy as that of an ancient and wise grandparent figure, slightly stern and Saturnian. It’s taken from a short refrain I like to sing when in the company of the tree:

Great Grandfather Pine,
Through your layers exist deep time.

It is a general practice of Wort Journal to avoid gendering plants where possible, in recognition that where some folks may appreciate or enjoy this as an element of their relationship to particular plants, others can find it alienating

7. ‘Etymology Online‘, via Sarah Bobodzhanov-Corbett,  ‘Pine Resin Medicine for Aquarius Season‘, Rowan and Sage (2022) 

8. Rupa Marya & Raj Patel,  Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (2021)

9. See chapter 4, ‘Respiratory System – The Last Thing You Smell is a Forest Fire, section 5 – Breathing Truth to Power’ in Inflamed (see ref. above) to read more about the written words’ origins in colonialism.

10. Please go to this page and scroll to the bottom (I encourage you to read the whole page too as well as exploring the whole website!) for Layla K. Feghali’s definition of her term ‘Plantcestor’.

11. Home Is Where Our Heart Is, ‘The Pine Trees – a Guide to their food, medicine and identification’ (YouTube, 2021)

12. Scott Cunningham,  Magical Herbalism: The Secret Craft of the Wise (Llewelyn, 2001)

13. Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Health, ‘Pine Needle Tea’  (2020)

Hat Fidkin is a plant devotee and astrologer from the West Midlands. They are a student at the School of Intuitive Herbalism. matterpoetics.substack.com

Edited by Leo El-Qawas